How to Find Pearson’s Coefficient of Skewness in Excel

Pearson’s coefficient of skewness is a method developed by Karl Pearson to find skewness in a sample using descriptive statistics like the mean and mode. Skewness is one measure of the shape of a set of data. There isn’t an Excel function to find Pearson’s coefficient of skewness. In the descriptive statistics area of the Data Analysis Toolpak, skewness is calculated by using the third power of deviations around the mean. This is different from Pearson’s coefficient of skewness, which uses either the mode or the mean. There is a workaround that you can use by combining some basic Excel functions.

Pearson’s coefficient of skewness (second method) is calculated by multiplying the difference between the mean and median, multiplied by three. The result is divided by the standard deviation. You can use the Excel functions AVERAGE, MEDIAN and STDEV.P to get a value for this measure.

Pearson’s second method for finding skewness.

How to Find Pearson’s Coefficient of Skewness in Excel

Step 1:Type “Coefficient of Skewness” in an empty cell. for example, in cell A1.Step 2:Type the following formula into a second empty cell. For example, in cell A2:
“=3*( AVERAGE(B2:B29)-MEDIAN(B2:B29) ) / STDEV.P(B2:B29)”Step 3:Change the cell locations to reflect where your data actually is. In this example, the data is in B2 to B29 (B2:B29), so change your cell locations accordingly.Step 4:Press “Enter.”

Tip: If you already know your mean, median and standard deviation, you would enter the actual numbers into the formula. For example, if you mean is 100, your median is 50 and your standard deviation is 12 you would enter:
“=3*(100-50)/12”